One of the circuits activated by social encounters is the mirroring system and includes regions where the mirror neurons we mentioned earlier have been found. This circuitry registers the physical properties of others as well as our own body shape and movements. It includes the premotor areas, parts of the frontal cortex and the parietal lobes – all regions involved in actions. The integration of neural systems that represent both our own bodies and the bodies of others can explain why watching the suffering of another person when they are in pain also triggers our own corresponding brain regions.28
In addition to a system that registers the physical similarities with another person, another circuitry is activated when we contemplate ourselves, compared to thinking about others. This mentalizing system involves the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC – the region in the middle of your forehead), the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ – where the two lobes meet, which is a couple of inches above the temples) and the posterior cingulate (PC – located close to the crown of the head) and appears to support thought processes when you are thinking about yourself. These contemplations include the relatively stable aspects of our personality that we have insight into, such as ‘I am really quite an anxious person’, as well as ever-changing feelings such as ‘I am feeling quite confident at the moment’. This circuitry is also active when we mentally time travel to think about the past or imagine our self in the future.
Both stable and transitory self-reflection show up as increased activation of the MPFC.29 Self-reflection also includes the extended self of objects. In the same way that there is a characteristic P300 brain signal that registers stuff that belongs to you, as discussed in the last chapter, the MPFC is activated in situations where the endowment effect is triggered, which supports the idea that this region is part of the neural representation of at least one aspect of self.30
The self-reflection system is not just about naval gazing, however. It enables us to imagine our self in different situations that others might face. This sort of ability would enable one to self-project or simulate another person’s situation possibly as a way of understanding what their thought processes or emotions might be. The Scottish social neuroscientist Neil Macrae has described the MPFC system as a kind of knowing me, knowing you mechanism. In other words, when you are making judgements about other people, you are really comparing them to yourself. This is why, when adults are asked to judge others, the more objectively similar they are to the person they are thinking about, the more activation is observed in their own MPFC.
Once we identify with others in our group, we are more likely to mimic and copy them. These are acts of affiliation, signalling our allegiances. We want to be seen to be like others in the group in order to consolidate our position. However, if someone from an out-group copies us, we interpret this mimicry as mockery – an act of provocation. It is not enough that we like those who like us, but we are actively suspicious of others who are not in our tribe.31
Our empathy is also two-faced. When we watch someone from our ethnic group receive an injection in the cheekbone, we wince and register more mirrored pain in our brains compared to watching the same pain inflicted on someone from another race.32 We can more easily watch others suffer if we do not identify with them. Taken to its logical conclusion, we can witness and inflict suffering upon others without feeling any remorse by dehumanizing them. This is one of the reasons why we refer to those we persecute as insects, parasites, animals, plagues, or any other term that demeans our enemy or victim as not being a member of the human race.
When the division between groups escalates into conflict, humans treat each other in the most terrible ways imaginable. Whether it is political, economic or religious justification, there seem to be no boundaries when it comes to the suffering and cruelty we can inflict upon other humans when we regard them as the enemy. This has been borne out in countless conflicts in the modern era, where neighbours have turned on each other and committed atrocities that seem inconceivable. Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Syria are just a few examples where communities that had known decades of peaceful coexistence suddenly erupted into genocide as one group tried to obliterate another.
That ordinary people can readily commit extraordinary atrocities against their neighbours is puzzling. What can make people behave in such a way that one would never dream possible? One explanation is that our own moral code is not as robust as we would wish. We are not as independently minded as we think we are. Rather, we are easily manipulated by the influence of the groups to which we belong and conform to the will and consensus of the majority rather than stand up against persecution and prejudice. We readily submit to the commands of individuals we perceive to have authority in the group. Whether it is our compliance to fit with what others do and say, or our obedience to follow orders, we are remarkably malleable to the pressure of the group. Our desire to be good group members seems to trump our desire to be group members who do good.
This idea is supported by two classic studies that dominate the field of compliance. The first was Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies,33 conducted at Yale in the 1960s. Here, ordinary members of the public were recruited to take part in what they thought was a study of the effects of punishment on memory. The were asked to ‘teach’ a student in another room to learn lists of words by punishing mistakes with increasing levels of electric shock, rising in thirty increments from an initial 15 volts to the final 450 volts. The first level was labelled ‘mild’ whereas the 25th level (375 volts) was labelled ‘danger, severe shock’. The final two levels of 435 and 450 volts had no label other than an ominous ‘XXX’. In reality, the student in the other room was a confederate of the experimenter and there were no electric shocks. The real purpose of the study was to determine how far someone would go in inflicting pain on another innocent individual when instructed to do so by an authority figure. Contrary to what the psychiatrists had predicted – they thought only about one in a hundred members of the public would obey such lethal orders – two out of three participants administered the maximum level of electric shock even though the student had been screaming and pleading to be let go. They were prepared to torture the other person to death. This is not to say most were sadists at heart; many became very distressed at the pain they were causing and yet continued to obey the orders.
The second classic study that contributed to our understanding of the way that individuals conform to group pressure is Stanford psychologist Phil Zimbardo’s prison study,34 conducted in 1971. In this mock scenario, students were recruited to take part in a two-week study of the effects of assigning the roles of prison guards and inmates in a makeshift prison built in the basement of the Stanford psychology department. The guards were told that they could not physically abuse the prisoners but they could create boredom, frustration and a sense of fear. After six days, and on the insistence of a fellow psychologist, Zimbardo abandoned the study after the guards were abusing the prisoners to such an extent that it went beyond the realms of ethical procedure. Even though they had not been given instructions to directly harm the inmates, some of the guards began to torment and torture the ‘prisoners’ over and beyond the original instructions. In the same way that three-year-olds were prejudiced against classmates who wore a differently coloured T-shirt, adult students took their prejudices and acted them out in violence. For Zimbardo, who interprets his study as a demonstration of the lack of personal responsibility, it was not the individuals but rather the toxic nature of the ‘us’-and-‘them’ mentality of the situation that had created the right conditions for cruelty.